An inventory analyst in Top Golf – Mr. Bryan Harej had once told that using Excel spreadsheets for inventory management tasks eventually turns out to be costlier than a top-of-the line inventory management software itself.

Are you going through the similar pain of managing your inventory with the help of excel spreadsheets? If yes, then congratulations you are amongst thousands others who go through the same pain day in and day out. Managing inventory can be a very time consuming and tedious process, especially if you are planning to sell on multiple marketplaces. So what do you do to manage this smartly, so that you as an online retailer can focus more on your business expansion? Its simple, you need an Inventory Management Software, one that is made for you and is driven by your business needs and logic.

Every business is different and so no one system would work for all, but having said that there are some basic features that an Inventory Management System should have.

Inventory Management: Managing inventory accurately across multiple marketplaces becomes the biggest challenge you can face while selling online on different marketplaces. “For example, you have 30 pieces of a product in stock and you want to sell those on multiple marketplaces. What quantity would you put across these marketplaces? If you put 30, you run the risk of overselling, if you put less then you run the risk of underselling. This is the problem that an inventory management software would solve for you. Using something like this, you can centralize your entire warehouse stock from one place. So, now without any fear of getting out of stock, you can place 30 pieces across all marketplaces. If 25 pieces are sold from Amazon, stock gets deducted and will be displayed as 5 on all marketplaces in minutes.

Managing Orders: Managing orders can be cumbersome. Using an Order Management Software, you can view and manage orders from multiple marketplaces, from a single screen.

Suppliers Management: List and manage your suppliers, auto generate purchase orders based on your remaining warehouse quantity are the features that can really help you excel in your business.

Fulfillment: Managing pick, pack and ship processes accurately and quickly is extremely important to succeed while selling online. You can integrate different shipping carriers and manage shipping seamlessly.

Reporting and Analytics: Getting accurate reports become essential in competing smartly in this online selling universe. With the help of these reports, you can plan your future market strategy and grow your business successfully.

Again, what may work for someone else might not work for you. These are just the features that you should look out for when contemplating about getting rid of excel spreadsheets to manage your inventory.